Building or reconstruction near Serb monestery in Kosovo?

Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) has protested over what it said were construction works on a road leading to its 14th-century monastery in Kosovo, while Pristina says it was a maintenance of the existing road and invited diplomats to see the works.

The US envoy to Kosovo and the European Union Office’s chief in Pristina reacted upon the SPC protest, and the works near the Visoki Decani monastery within a protected zone were suspended.

The monastery is on the UNESCO protected heritage list.

Kosovo Prime Minister said on Monday that was not the building of a new road, but the reconstruction of the old one and invited foreign representatives to visit the site and see for themselves.

“The information is not correct, so I call upon the diplomats to come to the site and see that it is the existing road in reconstruction,” Ramush Haradinaj said.

The SPC alerted authorities in Serbia and the international community over the weekend, saying that a new road Pristina – Plav (a north-western town in neighbouring Montenegro) was supposed to pass near the monastery which contradicted the law on Special Protected Zones.